Democrats Trash Lobbyists In Speeches, But Party with Their Cash - ABC News

Sen. Pat Leahy, left, and lobbyist Tony Podesta at a party at Charlotte's Mint Museum during the Democratic convention. (ABC News) By BRIAN ROSS (@brianross) , MATTHEW OSK (@mattmosk) , RHONDA SCHARTZ and MEGAN CHUCHMACH (@megcourtney) (September 7, 2012) Inside the Democratic convention hall in Charlotte this week, the lobbyists and special interests took a rhetorical beating from the party that has tried to carry the mantle of Washington reform.
"If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void: lobbyists and special interests; the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election and those who are making it harder for you to vote," President Obama said as he accepted his party's nomination Thursday night.
But outside the hall, lobbyists and their friends in Congress were the toast of Charlotte, just as they had been in Tampa during the Republican convention.
At the Mint Museum, a global art museum with a modern flair, top Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta received a steady stream of guests -- senior Democratic senators, ranking members of the House, and the congressional staffers and insiders who play key roles in the legislative process.
"We're happy to entertain our friends and guests," said Podesta, whose clients include BP Oil, Wal-Mart and dozens of other corporations with major issues in Washington.
When Charlotte was named as the convention host city, the Democratic National Committee said they wanted a different kind of political event -- one that would be in keeping with President Obama's vision for diminishing the role of special interests and corporate lobbyists.
When he announced his White House bid in 2007, Obama complained that lobbyists "think they own this government. But we're here today to take it back. The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page."
In the convention hall, lobbyists were enemy number one.
"American families didn't have an army of lobbyists on our side," said the Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, to lusty applause, as she described the fight to create a new consumer financial protection agency. "And when the lobbyists were closing in for the kill, Barack Obama squared his shoulders, planted his feet, and stood firm. And that's how we won."
But by the time the 2012 convention launched this week, the goal of a convention free from lobbyist money had been significantly watered down. One of the major sponsors donating to an entity formed to help pay for the festivities was McGuireWoods LLP, a firm registered to lobby for Duke Energy, the NBA, and others.
Lobbyists were an even greater presence outside the official convention events -- at restaurants and other party venues around town. Lobbyists for electric utilities rented out the historic Duke Mansion in Charlotte's oldest residential neighborhood, and entertained Democratic governors with a string quartet and open bar. Casualty insurance lobbyists held court at a nightclub called Tilt, where drinks flowed and music pounded.
There is a reason the lobbyists have blanketed Charlotte, even in the face of the harsh rhetoric aimed in their direction, said Jack Abramoff, the one-time super-lobbyist who became an advocate for reform after he served a prison term for bribery.
"It gives a lobbyist an opportunity to be displayed in a setting of political importance for the members of Congress, and for the others who will be, perhaps, in the administration," Abramoff told ABC News. "And I think the more the lobbyists are seen in the context of important events and hobnobbing with people who are important, the more their stock goes up."
While many of the events were closed to the media, Podesta was one of the few members of his trade who didn't feel the need to hide his efforts in Charlotte. ABC News spotted five U.S. senators at one of his daytime events, among them Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy.
Podesta said he was happy not to be hit up for money to support the convention host committee. "It enables us to be able to do wonderful parties like this instead of spending money on fencing and security so we thank the President for his direction of our activities more to events like this," he said.
Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia said he did not feel compelled to defend his decision to attend Podesta's event.
"It's still a free country and people can network with people of their choosing," he said.

Abdurahman Alamoudi president of the American Muslim Council established the Muslim chaplain program for the Department of Defense,

Another regular fixture on Capitol Hill for more than a decade was Abdurahman Alamoudi — friend to Democrats and Republicans alike, and arguably the most prominent Islamic leader in America. As president of the American Muslim Council, he advised U.S. presidents and was courted by a number of presidential candidates. He established the Muslim chaplain program for the Department of Defense, worked with Republican activist Grover Norquist to establish the Islamic Institute lobbying organization, and served on the advisory board for CAIR.
Today, Abdurahman Alamoudi is no longer roaming the halls of Congress, or having lunch at the White House. He was arrested in 2003 and is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence for his role in a plot to assassinate Saudi King Abdullah at the request of Libyan intelligence.
In July 2005, the U.S. Treasury Department publicly admitted that Alamoudi, while he was the most influential Islamic leader in Washington, D.C., was also the top al-Qaeda fundraiser in America.
Treasury officials stated that Alamoudi’s arrest was “a severe blow to al-Qaeda.”

via pajamasmedia.com

Tea Party Connections to Jihadist Groups

I'm just reminding myself about the dangers of the Tea Party and catering to politics that works merely in economic theory.   These types of charades are just asking for wolves in sheep skin.  While I prefer small government, there is no doubt that corruption often comes in small government packaging.

 Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist: 1/2 of the Islamo-Sleazebag-a-Palooza Goes to Prison. The Other Half is in the Tea Party.

I’m talking about Grover Norquist,  whose Americans for Tax Reform is a major sponsor of the Tea Party launch event, Tea Party Patriots’ manifesto, at today’s start of CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference).  Norquist bragged to Politico that he is behind the tea party activists’ presence at CPAC.  That’s braggadocio the tea party people would run away from if they truly abhor anti-Semitism, anti-Israel activism, and Muslim extremism.  But they aren’t running the other way.  They are embracing Norquist.  And Norquist isn’t just embraced by Tea Partiers in Washington or in town for CPAC, but by key Tea Party leaders, organizers, and activists in every state, whom he’s traveled to meet and who also embrace him and ask him for guidance.
Many in the know refer to his organization as “Arabs for Tax Reform,” for good reason.  Even Norquist’s ATR business cards are bilingual, with everything in Arabic on the flip side (or perhaps the main, with English on the flip side).
Norquist, a founder and board member of the Islamic Institute (which operated out of his offices), was on the take from Gulf state emirates and laundered money for his buddy Jack Abramoff.  At Islamic Institute (which operated out of Abramoff’s Americans for Tax Reform offices), he employed Khalid Saffuri, an admitted funder of “the martyrs”–he adopted HAMAS homicide bombers’ families and funded them.  And Norquist and Islamic Institute accepted cash from several “charities” which laundered money for the Saudi government to Al-Qaeda. Norquist got a top Bush White House job for Suhail Khan, whose father, Mahboob Khan, twice brought Al-Qaeda biggie Ayman Al-Zawahiri into the country to raise money for Al-Qaeda at the elder Khan’s mosque. The younger Khan proceeded to invite extremist Muslim clerics, such as one who described Jews as a “dirty little tribe,” to hang out with President Bush.
And then there is my own experience with the Islamic McCarthyism that is the Norquist brand:
Norquist got the spineless Heritage Foundation (and its Islamic lobbyist chief, Edwin Feulner, whom he took on a trip to meet the emir of Qatar) and the Town Hall site, which Heritage then owned, to remove my columns, because he was upset that I wrote about Republican Congressman Darrell Issa’s embrace of Hezbollah, terrorist state Syria, and anti-profiling laws for Arabs and Muslims.  Norquist, a National Rifle Association board member, who got the NRA to revoke a written invitation to me to speak at its annual national convention because he was upset that I wrote about his close friend, Sami Al-Arian’s founding, involvement in, and terrorist fundraising for Islamic Jihad (a bombing he funded murdered New Jersey college student, Alisa Flatow, a friend of my sister’s).  The NRA revoked the dis-invitation only when I was about to discuss their behavior on the Howard Stern syndicated radio show.
Yes, this is the man the conservative movement embraces, and whom Karl Rove shielded from Justice Department prosecution, even though he laundered money for Jack Abramoff through Americans for Tax Reform and defrauded U.S. taxpayers who gave up the taxes on the millions Norquist laundered through his tax-deductible organization for Indian Tribes Abramoff represented and who wanted to protect their gambling fiefdom.  There is no difference between ACORN’s tax fraud and misuse of its tax deductible status and that of Norquist and his ATR. Yet conservatives continue to embrace him, and Norquist brags to Politico about how he got away with it:

Norquist said he’s worked to bring on board tea party activists and hasn’t faced any backlash from those who see him as part of the establishment or who hold against him his involvement in the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Yup, Grover Norquist one of the not-so-know, same-old-establishment faces of the Tea Party movement.

via debbieschlussel.com

yes this is old news, but before any Conservative is supported we need to know what his connections were to Norquist.

Sami al-Arian. [Source: Chris O'Meara]In 1995, investigators raid two groups in Tampa, Florida, associated with Sami al-Arian, a university professor who some claim has been a supporter of terrorist groups. These raids alert investigators to a group of Muslim charities in Herndon, Virginia, known as the SAAR network (see July 29, 1983). An investigation into that network’s alleged terrorism financing begins. In 1998, National Security Council aides in the Clinton White House push the FBI to intensify the SAAR investigation. However, the FBI declines, claiming that an aggressive probe would be seen as ethnic profiling. The SAAR network will not be raided until early 2002 (see March 20, 2002). [Washington Post, 10/7/2002] Al-Arian will not be arrested until 2003, largely on the basis of activities from 1995 and before. He will eventually be sentenced to almost five years in prison and will admit to aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (see December 6, 2005), which the US has officially designated as a terrorist group.

via historycommons.org